Ghost Concert: Missing Songs

Ghost Concert: missing Songs is a twelve-episode original anime produced by ENGI. In fact, the project has a surprisingly long history, with its prototype already existing as far back as 2017. That said, activity had more or less come to a halt around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. This work marks the first step in the project’s revival. When you watch the first episode, the first thing you understand is that you understand nothing. This is not a metaphor. It is on a level where I can honestly say I have never seen an anime leave its viewers behind to this extent. To put it simply, this series is “the musical version of Fate.” In a near-future Japan where singing has been banned by the AI MiucS, the protagonist has lived with a peculiar condition since childhood: historical great figures, known as Great Ghosts, can possess his body. One day, after Cleopatra takes over his body, the protagonist finds himself in another world existing in a separate space from reality, where he encounters monks from an organization called TERA and a childhood friend. TERA is unable to defeat Cleopatra, but the protagonist manages to reconcile with her by singing a duet together with her… Believe it or not, all of this is told in the very first episode. And this is not like Oshi no Ko or Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, where the first episode is unusually long. Astonishingly, all of this content is crammed into twenty-four minutes. I wrote my impressions of this first episode on the Japanese blogging site note, and my reaction was quite harsh because the episode was so scattered and unfocused. And this sense of confusion only gets worse with each passing episode. Proper nouns keep increasing without much explanation, and so does the cast. Under those circumstances, the main characters are given more depth, but because the basic situation itself is hard to grasp, the emotional core ends up going missing. One reason for this is that the Great Ghosts themselves do not feel very meaningful. Every episode introduces multiple historical figures, and the history-loving protagonist shows off his knowledge about them. This happens again and again. Again and again. And yet, they do not have much deep involvement with the main axis of the story. It feels pointless. The sci-fi elements are scattered all over the place as well. Core questions, such as why singing has been banned in this world and where the protagonist’s parents went, are not addressed until around episode ten. With the story heading off in unexpected directions while those questions remain unanswered, question marks naturally begin multiplying in the viewer’s mind. Ghost Concert: missing Songs is a confused anime. It is probably the most viewer-unfriendly anime of this year—no, perhaps of the entire 2020s—and one with catastrophically broken storytelling. I can say that with about 90% confidence. And yet, this is also an anime with a strange kind of appeal. The protagonist and his fellow members of TERA are distinctive, and every episode features bizarre, comedic banter between them. The momentum is far greater than that of an average anime, and in many senses, it is never boring. The protagonist gains power by singing together with the Great Ghosts, and those songs are created by staff members who were also involved with the Symphogear series. Every song is genuinely good. Another point that must not be forgotten is the beauty of the battle scenes. The animation density itself is not especially high, but the movement is surprisingly smooth, and you can strongly feel the staff’s dedication. This is a point that can be praised without reservation. To repeat myself, this is a strange anime. Its carefully crafted animation and dialogue-driven comedy stand on top of a foundation of disastrously broken storytelling, somehow maintaining balance while on the verge of collapse. Or rather, is it maintaining balance at all? Maybe it is not. That is the kind of anime this is. If it catches your interest, I would absolutely like you to give it a watch.

Ghost Concert: Missing Songs has serious problems, foremost of which is the pacing. Both character and plot progress too quickly. The bones of the characters are there, but they aren’t given enough time to get fleshed out. This severely limits how much viewers can connect with them and weakens the profound moments of evolution they each go through. Similarly, the plot is very concept-heavy - multiple factions vying for power to reach differing goals, new rules for both the “real” world and the spirit world… - and these concepts appear too quickly and haphazardly to be coherent or add meaning to the character struggles. Most of them make sense in hindsight, but that still means the moments where they would have had impact are already past. And yet somehow, at the same time, Ghost Concert moves too slowly. The short series spends a great deal of time making jokes that fall flat, adding suspense that goes nowhere, and stoking drama that the characters aren’t strong enough to support. But most egregiously, there is an entire farcical episode that adds nothing to plot nor character, and that’s an absurd choice when given only twelve episodes to make a point. Yet despite these glaring and serious problems, Ghost Concert: Missing Songs is beautiful, and its core premise shines splendidly: Music is a central part of the human experience, and is perhaps even an essential part of being human in the first place. (I sincerely hope all the music and lyrics in this anime were composed and performed by humans.) Ghost Concert ties music to human emotions, even “negative” ones like guilt, sadness, anger, and anxiety, and asserts that these are critical parts of who we are. And while this idea isn’t exactly novel, it is presented well. What I enjoyed most of all, though, is something that was new to me in the anime/manga realm - the idea of music as catharsis and a new method for exorcising troubled spirits. As opposed to old tropes of exorcism through force or completing unfinished business, spirits in Ghost Concert are exorcised through empathy, being care for, being met on a human/peer level rather than an enemy/“other” level, and through confronting and accepting their own regrets, and what better way to do this than through the power of song? The historical figures featured here have long since been reduced to celebrity and myth, and in many ways the lyrics sung during their “requiems” seek to address and refute that - although brief, these songs restore a bit of their humanity by granting that they must have had fears, self-doubts, anger, feelings of injustice and inadequacy, and hopelessness. They may have been “heroes”, but no hero is perfect in their confidence, their morals, or their belief that what they’ve accomplished is lasting, meaningful, and good, and even world-shakers need someone to reassure them, forgive them, or help them just let go. Music is a fabulous medium for accomplishing this. Ultimately, Ghost Concert: Missing Songs was a disappointment, especially because it could have been so much more. But at only 12 episodes long, it can also be a quick watch with enough fun songs and beautiful messages to make it worth the experience.